Hey fellow ant keepers, hope you all are doing well. Today I lost one of my Phidole queen in a test tube setup. I'm looking for the possible reasons that is responsible for its death. She was active and in a very good condition yesterday. She had not laid a single egg either. Could infertility be the cause of its death.? Because as far as I know an infertile queen out of its nest is as good as dead because she will not eat and will eventually starve to death. Now this could be totally wrong but these are the things that I've heard and wanted to ask you guys.

Some of them will also just die. I've lost roughly 50% of the queens I have caught. Not 50% of each species mind you. It does make sense that there are a lot of factors that will prevent every queen from being successful. Could you imagine if every single fertilized queen actually survived to found a mature colony?